Buying Nintendo Switch? Use It To Charge Your MacBook Pro

Nintendo Switch goes on sale today at $300. If you are buying or plan to buy the Switch, you should know that it could serve as more than just a gaming console. Nintendo Switch has the USB Type-C port for charging, the same port as the new MacBook Pro. Apple’s computers can receive power from a portable battery bank… or a Switch console. Yes, the Switch can charge your MacBook and vice-versa.

Screenshot:YouTube/FloKO

How to charge new MacBook Pro with Nintendo Switch

The Japanese company has provided its new console to some gamers and tech reporters to get a hands-on experience. Mike Murphy, a technology reporter at Quartz, has discovered that if you plug the Switch in to a new MacBook Pro, the gaming console charges the computer. It should have been the other way around, right? Anyway, it means you can carry the console as a power bank for your MacBook.

Lol if you plug a Nintendo Switch into a new MacBook Pro, the Switch charges the laptop, not the other way around pic.twitter.com/YJhMct6fKO

We wonder if engineers at Apple and Nintendo envisioned this scenario. Since the trick works with the 2016 MacBook Pro, it should work with the 12-inch MacBook as well. It’s quite surprising that a smaller system with 4,310mAh battery that uses 39W of energy would be able to charge a MacBook Pro with 54.5 Whr lithium-polymer battery that draws up to 61W of power.

When you connect your smartphone to a computer, it’s the computer that charges the phone, not the other way around. There is no option to choose which device you want to charge using the USB Type-C cable. Just remember that you will need a dual USB-C cable (support for USB-C interface on both ends) to charge your MacBook Pro using Nintendo Switch. Do not use the accessory that comes with the console because it uses a USB-C to AC adapter.

Charging your Switch through a MacBook

Is there a way to charge your Nintendo Switch using the MacBook? Yes, of course. When the console is turned on, it charges the computer. If your Switch needs battery power, turn it off and then connect it to a MacBook. You’ll see the battery charging symbol in the upper left corner of the console’s screen. However, it wouldn’t work if you turn on the Switch at any point while it’s charging.

Alongside Switch, Nintendo has launched a mobile app for the console’s parental controls. The app lets parents remotely restrict what games children can interact with and for how long. The Japanese company said earlier that it would have more than 100 gaming titles for the Switch. Nintendo is trying hard to regain some ground against Sony’s PlayStation 4 and Microsoft’s Xbox One.

Nintendo Switch is a hybrid console. You can use it to play games on TV or play on the go. It features a 6.2-inch LCD screen. The console is powered by NVIDIA Custom Tegra processor, and comes with 32GB of built-in storage. Users can expand the storage up to 2TB using microSDXC or microSDHC card.